Keith, I am sure you mean to inform or express your objection to what you have been lead to believe about Behringer and patent or design infringements but you are passing unfounded rumors.
The famous often quoted Mackie case was 90% dismissed on first reading by a judge up could see almost all the claims were groundless. The point let stand for trial(which never took place) were simply a similar color scheme (one was blue and silver and the other was gray and silver so even there they were not copies) and a similar but not that close, of a feature set in their largest mixers at the time. Mackie was barking up the wrong tree with that, ALL mixers of similar size at the time, including their own were laid out and functioned similarly to prior designs by other longer established manufacturers. To relate it to Ham radio, Collins would have, using Mackie's logic, sued Drake for use of tubes, colors and a similar layout in their first trancivers despite being quite different in design and roughly similar in features, yet not acknowledge they were both derivatives of prior practices in the field by, say, Hallicrafters. It was clear the suit was brought as a marketing ploy by a company that was fast fading and losing market share. They published it on musician forums and in ads long before it was even filed or Behringer had been informed. It worked, you believed it without knowing the facts, or bothering to find out. There are essentially no patents on circuit designs, Mackie or others have nothing uniquely their own in terms of fundamental circuit novelty, only slight variations of common practice. These are "marketing" patents, ones intended to lead the casual reader or shopper to believe a concept is unique to them when in fact the patent really only covers the way plastic clips are used to hold a component in, and has nothing to do with operation or circuit topology. Consumers do not read patents. They see "Our revolutionary patented mixer is all new and the best", when it is clearly not new or best, or even much different from competing brands/models. I have a lot of inside information about Behringer and Mackie, DBX etc, and full sets of all the circuit diagrams for everything they ever made up until a few years ago and comparing the circuits of DBX, Mackie, etc reveals no copies, but they are all using similar parts with sub-circuits based on application notes by the IC manufactures. Behrngers main contribution was shifting assembly before the others to China. That is the big breakthrough that separated them from the other higher priced manufacturers. They offered higher performance-to-cost ratio equipment, none best of class but surely not worst either, just good value with good reliability. Their rack mount gear and small mixers were very reliable, quiet and worked as advertised, for a fraction of the selling price of the competitors. Since that time ALL of the mass market pro and musical equipment manufacturers have followed Behringer's lead and started subcontracting assembly in China, including Mackie. I've been to the Behringer headquarters in Germany many times, as well know quite well all the major brands and boutique brands of pro audio and I have been most impressed with Behringer. They have about the highest engineers/general staff ratio in the industry and have a modern tightly run operation. When I brought engineering data regarding the power supply problem and a set of proposed remedies a meeting with the design engineers, production engineers and even graphic arts was convened instantly and the issue was worked out in 30 minutes, including a conference call with Uli, the owner/chief engineer. Within hours the change was in place on the production line in China. I saw they were serious about getting it right and still keep their price point, something that is rare in the pro audio field where it can take months for a Japanese company to even acknowledge a problem. They have more engineers than their competitors in almost all cases. Uli Behinger himself designs much of the product line from his design center in Singapore where he lives. Next time someone uses that old rumor about stolen designs or cases lost ask the teller if he has ever compared the items he is referring to. He hasn't or he would be able to see in 1 second they are not the same. One rumor repeated in this thread was about copied PC boards even had copied mistakes. That is so easily proven false..it is supposed to be main channel boards of their 24x8 mixers at the time. Why did not any of the rumor mongers also report the same boards in question also had completely different layouts, the eq sections and AUX sends were in different areas of the pc boards, the only similarity was the channel faders were both located at the bottom of board....like every mixer ever made. Mackie even sued over the use of the Panasonic 100mm fader as an infringement on an "exclusive supply contract with Panasonic" but Panasonic 100mm faders were also supplied and used by 19 other mixer manufacturers simply because it is was the best inexpensive fader ever made. The judge, a non-techie, in that case throw it out because he picked up a parts catalog and found he could buy the same fader, one that Mackie claimed was an exclusive to Mackie. A phone call to Panasonic told the judge that the fader was a general stock item available from 10,000 Panasonic parts dealers worldwide and Mackie had no exclusive rights to it. Behringer used it for the same reason other companies used it, it was the best and cheap enough for competitive designs. I used it in my own prototypes for that were licensed to manufacturers. Mackie went done because they lost market share in what they were known for, small decent mixers, they were too expensive, and not any better performing or having any compelling features, not because any manufacture ripped off their designs. Mackie became popular because Greg Mackie had a good idea, build lower cost mixers by automated pc board assembly. That almost overnight took the low cost market away from more established mixer companies such as Soundcraft. Mackie had in vested in automated pc board production and dropped prices below the competitors. As the company grew they increased product lines in areas they were not good at and failed to keep up with advances in automation. Behringer came along and found that China had a major advantage in electronic assembly, they invested heavily in the latest automation production lines, so moved their production to China. That moved the base price point much lower and Mackie could not compete being stuck with 8 year old production automation and not the money to invest in the latest production lines. They lost track of why they succeeded in the beginning when they took the market from the leaders. By that time they were the leaders and Behringer took their market using the same principle; Value and price point. Stan Km6xz Happy K2 owner St Petersburg Russia Darwin, Keith wrote: > > < rant on > > > Behringer - They really bug me. Sorry to say it, but I do. They bug me > because they have a history of stealing other people's designs (Mackie, > DBX) and producing them very cheaply in China. Or at least that is the > way things appear and there is a history of law suits which suggests > others have the same opinion. > > They bug me because their gear really does work well for less money. I > have (had) 2 mixers, one was Behringer. My rack compressor is > Behringer. So is my parametric EQ. Our church has Behringer > compressors as well. We have a headphone distribution amp - yep, > Behringer. I compared the Behringer EQ to a Rane EQ and the Behringer > was better. I compared the Behringer 2 channel compressor to a DBX 2 > channel compressor and found the Behringer was better. > > Dang them! I really hate to support their less-than-ethical business > model, but I just can't escape the results of their approach. > > < rant off > > > - Keith N1AS - > - K3 711 - > > -----Original Message----- > I am wondering if this Beringer headphone splitter amp (HA400) will work > well with the K3. > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > > -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Headphone-Splitter-Amp-tp3174482p3208110.html Sent from the [K3] mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
